At the 2007 CATEC Conference (Central Asian Teachers of English Conference) I attended a workshop in haiku writing by Ludmila Shirmina from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

First Ludmila had us brainstorm in groups. We wrote down anything we wanted on the topic of spring. (See the photo). Then we put together our 3-line haikus following the pattern:

Line 1: 5 syllables

Line 2: 7 syllables

Line 3: 5 syllables

What’s cool about haiku is that they can just be images, or small little thoughts. They don’t have to be complete sentences even.

Here is the poem I wrote with my partner, Natalya Shiripova from Turkmenistan.

Under night’s white stars
such a delicate theme
two crickets kissing

I turned this into a 27-second song. (I added the article “the” in the first line. But, hey, haikus don’t have to be so exact.) 

Check out the video.

 

 Two Crickets (McCaughey, Shiripova) [0:27m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (33)